To the Forefront

Eric Herman

I’ve always enjoyed spotting trends in watershaping, and I think I’ve found another that bears mentioning.

This one first caught my eye on my daily walks through the neighborhood surrounding my home in Laguna Beach, Calif. I’ve always reveled in the creativity homeowners in this upscale seaside enclave apply in detailing their properties. Better still, it’s a place where no two homes are the same and almost everyone takes pride in doing something a bit different in customizing their surroundings.

Last fall, I started noticing that more and more homes hereabouts were sprouting watershapes in their front yards, clearly visible from the street. Some were simple or even folksy, as with the one in which an antique wellhead pump sent water into a wooden barrel; others were more elaborate, including several with combinations of sculpture and water and the occasional naturalistic waterfall and stream.

At first I didn’t pay much attention – water in front yards is, after all, not the newest idea – but then I started seeing them pop up like wildflowers in front of homes that had previously been water-free. The increase seemed significant, so I checked in with a local nursery that has long offered ornamental waterfeatures: The manager confirmed that, yes, up-front fountains and the like were hot, even in this economy.

Soon thereafter, I began chatting with watershapers about the concept, and many confirmed that they, too, had noticed an uptick in interest among their clients in smallish bodies of water in front yards. Some attributed this to a growing interest in Feng Shui, while others point to the obvious fact that these projects give homeowners who want water in their lives something they can do on a budget.

Still other watershapers – and these are the ones who really caught my attention because they seemed to have high levels of visionary fervor – proclaimed front yards to be the New Frontier for watershape and landscape design and the area in which they saw the greatest potential for growth in the decade to come.

We at WaterShapes are already following that line: Brian Van Bower covered the topic in his Aqua Culture column last month (“Moving in Miniature,” click here), offering a variety reasons why out-front watershapes make sense. This month, we pick up the discussion with pond and stream specialist Bob Dews, who writes about his front-yard endeavors in “Welcoming Waters” (click here).

Dews, a master of pond- and streamcraft whose work has appeared before in WaterShapes, called me to discuss feature ideas a while back. Without any prompting on my part, he mentioned that many of his recent projects had been in front yards or by entryways and that he’d developed some guiding principles that were helping him develop these designs. I’ll leave it to Bob to fully articulate those ideas, and I’m confident you’ll find that his observations to be quiite compelling.

Just how far and wide this trend might spread is anyone’s guess, but my hunch is that this is a watershaping genre whose time has come. And who are we to complain about an impulse that’s driving people to put water on display for all the world to see and enjoy?